BJP to take Deen Dayal Upadhayay to the English speaking elite

Backed by the Union ministry of culture, the Deen Dayal Research Institute is organising a lecture series on BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhayay and his integral humanism in New Delhi to reach out to the English speaking audience.

BJP national president Amit Shah paying tribute to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya in Bhubaneswar last week. The Deen Dayal Research Institute is organising a lecture series on the BJP ideologue in New Delhi to reach out to the English speaking audience.(PTI)

BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhayay and his integral humanism will now be introduced to an English speaking audience with the backing of the central government.

Over the weekend, guests at the capital’s intellectual hub, India International Centre (IIC), where the membership scroll is a venerable who’s who, will hear Upadhayay’s speeches, watch a film on his life and engage in free-wheeling discussions on his life and politics.

IIC, which once shut its doors on former railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, was conceived as a centre for the ‘quickening and deepening of true and thoughtful understanding between peoples of nations’ by the then Vice President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and John D. Rockefeller III with the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, selecting the site for its construction.

The event at the elite cultural institution is being organised by the Deen Dayal Research Institute (DRI), set up by Nanaji Deshmukh to validate the philosophy of the BJP ideologue, with the Union ministry of culture as a knowledge partner.

At a time when the government has stoked a controversy by proposing to make Hindi compulsory in schools, DRI has set out to engage the English speaking “elite”. It hopes to reach out to an audience, not familiar with Hindi which was Upadhayay’s language for communication.

“There is a large section of people who want to understand Upadhayay, but they are outside our constituency. We are trying to reach out to them,” Rajya Sabha MP, Prabhat Jha said. Upadhayay’s works should not only be familiar to those in the BJP, but for all politicians cutting across party lines, he added.

Kicking off on April 22, the lecture series will mark the anniversary of the four lectures delivered by the Jana Sangh leader in Mumbai in 1965, where he first proffered the idea of integral humanism.

“The dates 22-25 April coincide with the dates on which Deen Dayalji gave lectures in Mumbai on integral humanism. These lectures have been translated into English and will be read out,” said Atul Jain, general secretary or the DRI.

Last year as part of the Centre’s celebrations to mark the centenary year of the economist-sociologist, a 15-volume collection of Upadhyay’s writings was unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi.